World News

More than 60 migrants presumed dead after boat capsizes off Yemen

Nov 16, 2023

Geneva [Switzerland], November 16: More than 60 people are missing and presumed dead after a migrant boat capsized off the coast of Yemen last weekend, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday. The ship was travelling from Yemen to Djibouti with around 90 people on board when the incident occurred on Sunday. The coastguard of Yemen, where a civil war has been raging since 2014, rescued 26 people. The boat was said to be overloaded and the engine had failed in strong winds. Yemen is on the transit route to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, where migrants from Ethiopia in particular often try to find work, the IOM said. More than 93,000 migrants arrived in Yemen between January and October and many travelled on from there. That was more than in the whole of 2022, when 73,000 migrants arrived in Yemen.